Ever Skeptical of heinous self promotion, I moved to spam the mail but, I remembered how bad the alternatives were.

Freelance Infidelity

Recently my partner of 11 years, Emily, glanced over my shoulder while I worked and asked me which dating site I was on, see the image below for a reason why:

After explaining it was a freelance recruitment site called PeoplePerHour and I was scouting for staff, Emily asked:

‘Why are you giving a Ukranian developer a love heart? Thats absurd!’

I couldn’t really argue with her observation. I had criticised it myself to Dave (our Company Owner) while we scanned for top candidates to psychometrically test (a process we sell as an online service, heinous self promotion indeed!) before we let them join our active projects.

Typical Blurb

I took to reading through the description of Hubstaff Talent that they had sent. Acutely aware it was marketing spiel and I would get annoyed or bored or be better off finding out for myself if I liked it.

True enough it was blurby but some stuff made sense. I created an account.

Hubstaff Talent is new and, although familiar with using Hubstaff to record the movements of staff and pay them automatically, the freelancing site felt like a spin off and I was put off a little.

Like Taking Part In The Water Bucket Challenge

I was SO wrong. Immediately it asked for my Skype name. As mentioned before, we move away from the confines of the recruitment site and make more decisive contact with associates elsewhere. Usually we do this on Skype. It was good to know Hubstaff Talent got that. I was intrigued.

I went on to discover the service IS free and, although not overly populated by our type of developers yet, the facility is there for it to be a huge notice board to search for work and staff without having to throw some cash at the host. Freelance sites sometimes feel like I am feeding a greedy croupier with a dodgy poker deal.

Once a business discovers a freelancer they think would make a great addition to their team they can contact them directly – no middlemen involved. Freelancers are also able to search for work on the Hubstaff Talent Jobs page, a newly introduced section of the website.

Blurby, huh?

Boom Like Fifties Babies

I have a feeling that people might be using Hubstaff Talent a lot more soon, and AWD can’t wait to find even more talent there when they do.

4 Comments

Even aside from the inappropriate social-media-esque ‘hearts’ and so forth, the traditional PPH approach has an obvious flaw in it – once you’ve made contact with a client / employer, why would you continue to pay use the service? PPH and Freelancer seem to be constantly paddling upstream with artificial ways of enforcing ‘loyalty’. There is no avoiding the fact that while it’s reasonable for a freelancing site to want to make money, it’s also frustrating – as a freelancer, at least – to have to hand over chunks of hard-earned cash for every hour worked, despite the fact that the marginal cost of your labour to the freelancing site is basically zero.

This model seems to accept and embrace that reality, presumably in the hope that it will generate revenue via its Hubstaff software. I’ll be interested to see how it does.

I have been in the freelance business ever since I started working, three years ago.

It never really even occurred to me to find a job in an office, or one which would involve me getting up at 6:30am each morning, returning at 6pm in the evening, half-dead and unable to even pay the slightest attention to my family.

As such, I have learned to pay great attention to all sorts of freelancing websites which offer opportunities for people in my line of work, especially new ones which perhaps offer something which hasn’t been offered yet.

I had a good look at Hubstaff Talent, and I can say that it’s much cleaner and reliable than some other websites which are full of scammers and fake posters, which often results in lost funds or simply lost time (both might be equally important, to be honest). I recommend to anyone to have a good look at it and judge for themselves.

The clear advantage that Hubstaff Talent have is that they don’t need to get paid for their talent software. They already have a great product which is sold on two factors – the ease of tracking remote workers hours and the automatic paying of remote workers.

That leaves them in this enviable position of being able to make what looks to be – on tech, UI and philosophy fronts – a world beater in finding and hiring remote talent.